A Short History of Golf Ball
Tuesday September 4th, 2007 9:36AMIn the beginning - wooden golf balls
It was believed that the first golf ball was made of wood. However, there isn’t much written documentation from that era. So a lot details regarding the wooden balls is unknown.
1600s - 1850s Feather golf ball
In the early seventeenth, the feather golf ball or ‘Featherie’ replaced the wooden golf balls. The cover of the ball is made from horse or cow hide stitched together to form a ball leaving a small aperture. Wetted goose feather is then stuffed into the hole before it was stitched shut. When the leather and feather dried out, the leather shrank and the feathers expanded, forming a tight and hard ball. The feather balls were handmade by craftsman. This means that the quality will vary according to the skill of the craftsman. Also, a skilled maker can only completed a limited quantity of balls each day, making them very expensive.
1848 - 1900s Gutta Percha ball
The Gutta Percha ball or ‘Guttie’ in 1848 was introduced in 1948. The guttie ball is made from gutta percha, a rubber-like sap from a tropical tree. When boiled in water, the gutta percha can be shaped by handed into a ball, which will hardened when cooled. If the balls is broken or damaged during play, it can be reshaped after reboiling. With industrialization and mechanization, the gutties are stamped with metal mould instead of being rolled by hands. Patterns are also added to the surface to improve the driving distance of the gutties. The gutta percha ball made the game affordable to the wider population because it is much cheaper and easier to produce than the feather ball.
1900s - 1960s Rubber core ball
In 1898, Coburn Haskell invented the rubber core ball. It was made by winding rubber thread around a solid rubber core. The wound core was enclosed in gutta percha covering. These balls looked just like Gutties but the driving distance is 20-30 yards longer that its predecessor. By 1901, the rubber core ball was commercially produced and universally adopted.
That’s it. Following decades of technology advances, the rubber core ball has since evolved to the modern golf ball that we played today.